Editorial: Justice Department’s overzealous crackdown on leaks

San Francisco Chronicle

August 4, 2017Updated: August 4, 2017 4:27pm

Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats listens during an event at the Justice Department on Friday. Sessions held the event to discuss “leaks of classified material threatening national security.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks as Director of National...

The Justice Department’s newly announced crackdown on leaks has the distinct scent of political interference. President Trump has been hectoring Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in public and in private, to get tough in finding and punishing government employees who disclose information without authorization.

On Friday, Sessions pledged to deliver on the president’s wishes.

There were a number of disturbing elements of Sessions’ news conference, in which he announced an escalation of leak investigations that would include more resources, more aggressive criminal prosecutions against those who leak classified information, and a new counterintelligence unit within the Justice Department.

For one, history has shown that administrations often fail to distinguish between “national security” and “political security” (i.e., blocking revelations that expose embarrassing blunders or inconsistencies). Trump, in particular, regularly loses the distinction in condemning leaks of infighting and chaos within the White House.

Time and again, leaks that posed no threat to national security have revealed White House duplicity. The latest example came this week, when leaked transcripts of Trump’s late January conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia were indeed every bit as contentious as news stories at the time characterized — articles the White House denounced as “fake news.” Stories based on anonymous sources also forced the White House to walk back its denial that the president helped craft a misleading statement about his son Donald Jr.’s meeting with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

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The other highly unsettling announcement was that Sessions had opened a review of Justice Department guidelines for issuing subpoenas attempting to get journalists’ phone records in an attempt to identify confidential sources. The current policy, negotiated with the Obama administration after controversy over its overaggressive efforts, essentially allowed such a move after all other means have been exhausted — and after news organizations been given a chance to contest the demand in court.

Trump has also raised the issue of prosecuting journalists who publish or broadcast classified material. Sessions deflected a question on whether that was in his plans, saying he would not “comment on hypotheticals.”

The value of whistle-blowers and an unencumbered media to a democracy is not hypothetical. The history of government lies — throughout the Vietnam War, the malfeasance of Watergate and, more recently, the government’s use of torture and illegal surveillance of Americans — all came to light only through anonymous sources.

The embattled Sessions, channeling the president who belittles him, is going down a dangerous path.